


Revisited

by Quite an Irregular Thing (Purna)



Category: The Path (TV)
Genre: Episode 9: A Room of One's Own, Episode Tag, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7082551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purna/pseuds/Quite%20an%20Irregular%20Thing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A peek inside Alison's head during episode 9.  Posted on tumblr <a href="http://quiteanirregularthing.tumblr.com/post/145381159744/revisited-quite-an-irregular-thing-purna-the">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revisited

 

There is a sound in Alison’s head. 

It had started soft, a barely audible hum.  In the bar, sitting across from Sarah Lane, Alison had heard the words, “Your husband left a journal.”  And then the hum, emerging from the sad sounds of the jukebox.   

Sarah Lane still had a family.  She didn’t have a hole in her heart where her husband had been, didn’t know the depths of grief.  Alison knew grief.  She knew and it filled her with rage, just like it always did. Just like the sound that was filling up her head now.

Sarah was talking and talking, Meyerist lies and nonsense.  Sarah Lane, the fortunate one, blind to her own fortune and Alison’s sorrow. 

“Get over yourself.”  Alison’s heart was racing.  She barely knew what she was saying, barely knew what all was spilling from her mouth, but those words cut through the buzz.  Sarah Lane’s eyes went hard, no cracks in that armor, and then she slapped Jason’s journal on the formica table like a challenge.

Alison sat motionless in the booth for what felt like forever once Sarah Lane had gone.  And then she began to read. 

Afterwards, the buzz in her head swelled to deafening, pushing out everything else.  She remembered staggering out of the bar to her car, fumbling with her keys, driving.

She’s in the woods now, tripping over roots, the sound in her head forming into words.  _So wrong, Jason, I was so wrong._   The drawings in the journal make her weep, and the ripped-out pages flutter from her hands like leaves.  It’s started to snow, flakes softly falling.  She slips on rocks made slippery by ice, but she staggers ever onward.  She should be freezing but she feels nothing. 

Alison stops when the broad swath of white through the trees catches her eyes.  The snow on the lake is untouched, clean.  Stretches of water shine in the moonlight; the lake is not completely frozen over.

Alison stands motionless, just breathing.  She’s hollow and bleeding from the wound that is her chest, scooped out and empty.  She presses Jason’s journal to it, trying to staunch the flow, but there’s no help for it.

She drops to her knees on the icy rocks.  She needs to feel something.  She needs to block out the noise in her head.  She needs to sear the void in her heart with the fire of ice and cold.  

Her hands fumble at the ground.  Her numb fingers grasp a rock, find one that fits in her palm, just the right size.  First one rock, then more, fill the pockets of the old coat.  _His_ old coat, Jason’s coat.  It is very heavy when she stands, presses down on her shoulders with a reassuring weight.

The surface of the lake feels solid under her feet at first.  A few more steps and she hears the first crack.  The surface beneath the soles of her boots shifts under her weight.

A stretch of icy water lies before her, and the ice cracks more and more with every step.   She stops then, but the ice continues to move below her feet.  Her eyes are closed as she lifts her face to the sky.  The journal is tight against her chest.  Trickles of icy water seep into her boots and she waits.

The ground dissolves beneath her, and then the buzz in her head is finally gone.  “Jason,” she says and her mouth fills with water. 

There is nothing then but heat and light and Jason’s voice.  It fills her up and washes her clean and she thinks she finally, finally understands.  He’s there beside her then, his hands hot as fire holding hers.  She thinks she feels his lips on hers when the darkness falls for good.

*

Alison wakes with an audible gasp, sucking in cold air with lungs that feel tight.  Every inhalation hurts, rasping deep in her lungs, and she looks around herself wildly.   “Jason?”  Her voice sounds broken, barely recognizable.

She’s sitting on the shore of the lake, completely dry except for the damp seeping through her jeans.  The white surface of the frozen lake is undisturbed, and the snowflakes have stopped falling.  Her knees ache, bruised on the rocks.  Her face is wet, but only with tears.  She can taste their salt.

“Jason?” she asks again, but there is no one there.  She’s all alone out here in the woods.  Completely alone.

And that’s when she knows what she has to do.


End file.
